


Workplace Romance

by BuckyFrickenBarnes



Series: The Glamorous Life of Bucky Barnes [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Blushing Steve Rogers, Boss/Employee Relationship, Coffee Fixes Everything, Fluff, Idiots, Lots of blushing, M/M, Minor Clint Barton, Miscommunication, POV Bucky Barnes, all of them - Freeform, minor Natasha Romanov, pure fluff, their basically tomatoes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 18:28:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19932544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuckyFrickenBarnes/pseuds/BuckyFrickenBarnes
Summary: Bucky is under the impression that his boss hates him.Or,Steve needs to get better at dealing with his feelings.





	Workplace Romance

**Author's Note:**

> So, part two of this series, hoyah. I hope it doesn't suck.   
> At this rate, this series is turning more into a oneshot series than just me writing 30 minutes per day. I start writing, but then I don't know how to stop writing so I end up writing for like another hour. Halp me. 
> 
> Enjoy.

“You’re overreacting Bucky.” Natasha sighs as she sits next to Bucky on their lunch break.

Bucky rolls his eyes, “no, I’m not! The man hates me!”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Clint chimes in from the other side of the table.

“Pray tell, why do you think Steve hates you.”

Bucky puts down his sandwich so he could count the reasons on his fingers. “One, the man has never had an actual conversation with me. It’s like he tries to use as few words as possible when he answer’s my questions. Two, I don’t think he’s ever actually looked at me when he’s talking to me. You would think as our boss, he would make a little eye contact here and there, but no! Three, he still calls me James! I’ve told him at least once a week since I started here that I go by Bucky, not James. Fourth, he always picks you guys or Sam for the overtime projects! Not once has he picked me!”

“Okay,” Natasha starts, “First, don’t you think that as your boss, he should still be calling you James? Bucky might not seem as professional to him. Second, you’ve only been here for 4 months; there have only been a few overtime projects since you’ve been here. And to be honest, I can’t come up with anything for the first two. Maybe he does hate you.” She shrugged and took another sip of her black coffee.

“I’m starting to think he only hired me because you knew me. That’s the only explanation for why he would keep me around for so long if the man hates me! Why doesn’t he just fire me already! Why is he such an asshole to me!” Bucky bent over and pressed his face against the table with a long sigh before mumbling, “I have to have a crush on the one person here who hates me and can fire me at any moment.”

“What was that?” Clint asked.

“You know damn well what I said bird-man.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think Steve heard you.” Bucky shot up from laying his head on the table to whip around and look behind him. There stood Steve, looking as if he didn’t know which emotion he should feel.

Steve looked at his feet for a moment and cleared his throat. “Mr. Barnes, could I please see you in my office.”

“Uh, yeah… I mean yes.” Bucky stammered. Fuck. He’s about to get fired.

Bucky cleaned up the rest of his sandwich while he heard Steve’s footsteps retreat down the hall.

“I’m so fired,” Bucky said to no one in particular in the breakroom.

“Not necessarily.” Natasha tried to reason.

“Why wouldn’t he fire me, Nat. I just talked shit about him behind his back, I feel like that’s grounds for termination for any one of us. Don’t you?”

She didn’t reply before he got up out of his chair, threw his trash out in the corner of the room, and made the walk-of-shame down the hall to Steve’s office.

The door closing softly behind him was the only sound in the room as Bucky let himself into Steve’s office. Steve looked up from his computer for a few seconds before gesturing to the chairs arranged in front of his desk, “Please, sit.” Yup, this wasn’t going to be good.

“Is everything alright, Sir?” That’s right Bucky play the innocent card, that’ll get you somewhere.

“I think we may have a slight misunderstanding here,” Steve said.

Okay, what? “About what, Sir?”

“You seem to be under the impression that I don’t like you, and I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

“It’s alright, I didn’t expect everyone here to like me. I just didn’t expect the person who hired me to hate me so much and keep me around.”

“See, there’s the misunderstanding. I don’t hate you James, quite the opposite.”

“Excuse me?”

“How do I put this… I like you a lot, James. I think, a little too much. You could call it a crush among other things.” The blush on Steve’s face was hard to ignore. “I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable with unwanted advances in the office. I tried to minimize how much I interacted with you specifically in the office so that I could minimize how much embarrassment I put myself through. I know you’re here to work and I want to respect that, I’m here to work too.”

Steve looked at his hands before clearing his throat. “But uh, last night, Nat and I were having some drinks and she told me something that kind of surprised me. She said that you kind of had a workplace crush on me too. Of course, I didn’t believe her. But I heard what you said when you had your head on the table earlier. I guess I just thought I would be the bigger man and do something about it.”

Bucky sat unmoving for a moment before he realized that Steve was waiting for him to say something. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard you or zoned out or something. Did you just say that you have a crush on me?”

“Uh… yeah. I did… I do… have a crush on you. I did say that.” Steve clarified, not without tripping over his words.

“But why?”

“I don’t know. You seem like a very kind and genuine person, honest when you need to be. You work hard and you appreciate the work other people do. You’re excited about what you do, for the right reason. You also get this really cute smile when you’re happy and I’m sorry, I’m rambling.” There was a soft blush coating Steve’s cheeks.

“I’m sorry, I’m confused. Why do you avoid me then?”

“If you haven’t noticed I’m not exactly subtle when it comes to emotions… among other things. I tend to make a fool out of myself before I can catch myself and I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable when you started working here. Truth be told, I thought you were really cute when you walked in for your interview, but I tried my best to be professional.”

“Really?” It was now impossible to hide the blush on Bucky’s face.

Steve looked up at Bucky through his eyelashes for the first time throughout the conversation, “not to be cliché, but you also have unmistakably pretty eyes.”

“Is that why you never look at me when we’re talking?”

“I…” The words were caught in Steve’s throat, “I guess so…” his voice lowered to almost a whisper, “they’re really easy to get lost in.”

The redness hadn’t left either of their faces throughout the conversation.

After a short comfortable silence, Bucky spoke, “So, what now?”

Steve looked thoughtful for a minute before he spoke, seemingly gaining more confidence than he had before, “Would you like to go out for coffee sometime?”

“I… I would like that,” Bucky started, “but isn’t there something against coworkers dating?”

“I didn’t say anything about dating yet. Hopefully, we could talk over coffee though, outside work where we can get to know each other on a non-professional level. If all goes well, I would imagine we would need to tell HR about the relationship.”

After another brief silence, Bucky asked with a small smile, “So, coffee?”

Steve returned the smile, “Coffee.”

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback is appreciated, thank you for reading!


End file.
